Author's Note:
Hi everyone! The story is going to get darker quickly from here, and I thought I'd prepare you. I will likely be putting out chapters in clusters now that I've finished editing all the old chapters. There are some things that were added and timelines have been shifted slightly. If you've been following along it might be worth a reread if some of the things you read confuse you. Thank you to everyone who has waited for so long for me to continue this story, and thank you to anyone who is just joining us. Enjoy!
Two months after the debacle at the ministry, Dumbledore was back in her kitchen. Zia and Riddle Sr sat in their usual places, this time Tom and Regulus were also there. This time they'd added Newt Scamander to the group. Pozey the house elf clapped her hands, and the meal the elf had spent the entire day preparing sailed across the room and landed dish by dish neatly in the center of the table. Pozey liked cooking for larger groups.
"Now that we're all in one place, I'd like to discuss the ministry's proposition, and perhaps make one of my own," Dumbledore said. He leaned forward at the table and looked towards Zia. His auburn hair was slicked back and cut to shoulder length, and his beard was trimmed into a smart goatee. It looked strange to Zia seeing him like this, but she made no comment. Dumbledore could probably regrow his hair and beard in an instant if he wished. Maybe it was easier to eat with it all shorter.
"Go on then," Regulus, digging into a plate of sausages and heaping them onto his plate.
"I don't want mum to do it," Tom said immediately from his chair. He stabbed a chunk of potato with his fork. "She already works for Nana and Papa. She quit the other job already. She doesn't need more."
"I'm not sure the ministry plans to give me a choice Tom," Zia said, scooping up a ladleful of stew and heaping it into her bowl. "The letter from Theseus said I was being conscripted."
"My brother sent the letter?" Newt asked from his place at the table. Zia pretended not to notice him sneaking bits of his meal into the inside pocket of his robes. She'd already warned him about setting nifflers loose in the house.
"Yes."
"Has anybody else been conscripted?" Riddle Sr asked. "Can they even do that? It isn't like this is another war." Zia stuffed a forkful of carrots into her mouth to keep her face from giving anything away. World War II was on the horizon within the next few years. She was pretty sure that the whole Grindelwald thing turned into a magical war at about the same time. She wondered if her presence would change anything. She had already informed the ministry of several Grindelwald supporters in their ranks thanks to Alfie.
"Not that I'm aware of," Regulus said.
"I'm afraid I have a confession to make," Dumbledore said next. They all turned to him. He sighed and patted his mouth with a napkin. "I had a hand in setting up that letter from Theseus. According to my contacts, if the Auror office hadn't sent the letter you would have received a similar one from the Department of Mysteries."
"Spalding," Regulus savagely speared another sausage with his knife. "I guess the Auror office is better than that."
"I can't be an Auror," Zia said next. "I don't have nearly enough practice at magic for something like that."
"It's more of a consulting position," Dumbledore reiterated the contents of the letter. "You'll be pulled in when they want someone examined."
"I don't want mum to do it," Tom said again, more insistently this time. He stood up on his chair to bring his height over the rest of them. "It sounds dangerous."
"Which brings us to my proposition," Dumbledore continued now. Tom turned to him, hands held stiffly at his sides.
"It better be good after you set this up," Tom grumbled. He tapped his bare foot on the seat of the chair. Dumbledore's eyes twinkled back and he smiled kindly at Tom.
"I would like to offer more classes to Zia. She trains with me already regarding her legilimancy, however for whatever reason it appears she never went to school. I can set up classes for her with some of my colleagues and former students," he explained. Zia bit her lip, thinking it over. She'd learned some things from swimming through Alfie's mind, but it was like trying to hold water in her hands. Some things she retained, others slipped away. And she'd never actually practiced any of it herself.
"That would help with some things," Zia mused out loud. "At least I could learn to defend myself."
"Can I sit in?" Tom asked now. His arms were relaxed again and he leaned slightly towards Dumbledore. She could tell that his curiosity was now winning out over his irritation. He wasn't old enough to go to school or get a wand yet, but he still devoured any information about magic that he could find.
"I don't see why not," Dumbledore chuckled with a shrug. "Children watch their parents use magic every day."
"Alright then. I guess if mama has to work for the ministry then at least this will help make up for it," Tom grumbled. He sat back down in his chair.
"Do you have any moongrass?" Newt asked as everyone turned their attention back to the meal. His hand was in his pocket again. Zia raised one eyebrow at him, and he smiled sheepishly. She didn't know exactly what he'd brought with him, but she assumed the moongrass was more for the creature's benefit than Newt's.
"We is having moongrass in the greenhouse! Pozey will get it!" the house elf squeaked. There was a pop, then another pop, and Pozey held a fistful of some kind of glowing silvery blue plant out to Newt. Before he could take it, a tiny hand darted out and somehow managed to scoop up the entire bundle. It disappeared back inside his robes. Tom and Zia both leaned forward upon catching sight of it.
"What is that?" Tom asked.
"A sprite," Newt admitted, scooping a tiny creature that looked kind of like a blue-eyed lemur with oddly gauzy wings out from his robes. "Would you like to hold her?" Tom reached his hands out eagerly as Newt placed the sprite across them. It wrapped its fingers and tail around Tom and chittered at him as it stuffed its face with moongrass. "Their saliva has medicinal properties."
"She's very light," Tom commented, bringing the creature closer to his face. Newt looked over at Zia.
"I've met one other person who had a natural gift for legilimancy, but it wasn't quite like yours," he said. Zia looked over at him with interest.
"What was theirs like?"
"Hers is more...hearing thoughts as people think them," he explained as he held out a stray tuft of the moongrass to the sprite. Zia shuddered, glad that hers wasn't quite like that. It wasn't exactly pleasant living through someone's life, but she'd hate knowing what everyone else was thinking all the time.
"It must be exhausting," she said. Dumbledore was watching Newt with a curious expression on his face. Zia looked between the two, sure that there was something unspoken about this person that Dumbledore and Newt both knew but didn't want to say. She decided not to bring it up.
"I wouldn't like it," Newt said with another smile. "I'm not really a people person."
That evening after Zia put Tom to bed, she rejoined the adults in the living room of her house. There was an enormous fireplace in this room surrounded by overstuffed furniture. It was cozy. Regulus pointed his wand at the fireplace, and a crackling fire sprang to life in the grate. Thanks to the snapping of the fire, it was also good for conversations that perhaps shouldn't be held in front of Tom. He was mature for his age of course, but he was still a child.
"On to the second half of my proposition," Dumbledore said cheerfully. His hair and beard fell almost to his knees again, and he swept both out from under himself as he took a seat in one of the armchairs.
"Aside from teaching Zia more magic?" Regulus asked. He lounged across a loveseat, taking up the entire thing by himself. Newt was perched on an ottoman, the sprite on his lap. His briefcase was placed carefully at his side. Zia kept glancing at it every so often, and had asked Pozey to check on it now and then as well. She didn't want any of Newt's friends getting out and into her house. She didn't think her kitchen would do well with an Erumpet adding to the décor.
"Well this is more of a request." Dumbledore conjured a cup of tea and took a sip of it. "Biscuit?" He conjured up a tin of cookies. Zia took one and nibbled at the side.
"What request?" she asked. She watched Riddle politely decline the cookies and edge a little farther away from Dumbledore. He still wasn't fully comfortable with magic even though he and Regulus were housemates now, not that the location mattered all that much. They were all over at each other's houses so often that they were practically common ground.
"The ministry and I are not always on the best terms, however we are working towards the same goals. I'd like you to report back to me, essentially, the things that you pick up from your time working with them," Dumbledore said. He took another sip of his tea and fixed his glittering blue eyes on her. To say the ministry and Dumbledore weren't always on the best terms was putting it mildly in Zia's opinion. However, none of the truly problematic spats happened until book five which was set decades into the future. Before that...they'd gotten along tolerably.
"I can do that," Zia answered. It was an easy answer this time. Dumbledore was, in her opinion, better at looking at all the angles of a situation and coming up with the best plan than the ministry.
